Billie Jo had listened carefully as she was told she should work with the FBI and why. But she was looking at the two men in the Sears suits and Payless shoes – maybe Foley's if she were being generous. One was a little pudgy and probably close to retirement. Even the younger one had gray at the temples of his marine hair cut. Billie Jo wasn't going to give away any of her smarts, but she knew that the young FBI agents had to spend the first years of their career on surveillance teams or some such menial detail. Then she looked around the room. Agents Wilmington and Tanner had on those tight faded jeans. Agent Tanner was even wearing a shirt with pearl button snaps. If any of her friends had been around, they would have drooled together, thoroughly enjoying the view. And Agent Standish? Hell, the suit he was wearing was so fine she didn't even know where it came from. Double Hell, even their boss was wearing those boot cut Wranglers that were so tight that you couldn't pinch his butt.
She had looked back at the suits by the door, tuned up and threw a wall-eyed fit the likes of which no one North of the Red River had ever seen.
She trusted the men she had been talking with for the last two days, she claimed. She didn't trust the FBI – she was from Waco, after all – whatever that meant, but she tossed it in because it sounded good. Agent Standish was perfect to sell that "Russian stuff." JD (she couldn't call him Agent Dunne. She didn't feel like she had to since they were close to the same age) was as cute as a bug and would fit right in with Trey and Anson. She stomped a dainty little foot and it by golly didn't move until Colorado ATF team 7 was on its way to a temporary assignment in Harker Heights, Texas. There was, of course, the bureaucracy, the sibling-like rivalry between agencies and the inter-agency feuds. But Larabee suspected the deciding factor as to who would finally handle the case had a lot to do with the fact that Evie Travis, the judge's wife, was a Baylor alum and would be there for the festivities leading up to the homecoming game that was allegedly targeted for the bomb. Travis himself was to meet her to attend the game on Saturday. Judge Travis would want Larabee and his men working the case with so much at stake.
And so it was that Billie had returned to Harker Heights and introduced Ezra easily enough as an entrepreneur who might have access to some of the plutonium smuggled out of the former USSR. It reconfirmed Buck's opinion of the young lady when her friends never questioned that she might be intelligent enough or run in the right circles to meet someone like that.
Now Billie Jo was holed up in a hotel room in Austin waiting to find out if she needed witness protection or would be charged with making a false report. Ezra was in a Jeep Commander with Anson Jones negotiating to sell plutonium for one million dollars. And JD Dunne had weaseled himself into the little clique of Anson Jones, Trey Winters and about twelve others, to the point that they were beginning to trust him with their terrorist plans.
All JD had done was wander into the local titty bar and "accidentally" bump into Trey, Anson and their gang. He had fit right in, drinking hard, driving fast and resenting any sort of authority figure.
Vin had watched JD closely, but didn't say anything. Josiah, too, was seeing something in JD's personality, but kept his own counsel. Nathan and Buck were angry at Anson Jones that he was so willing to corrupt the new kid in town. Ezra had muttered something about the young agent being good in this role because he was playing so close to type. Chris had wordlessly acknowledged Ezra's insightfulness. Chris was worried because the role JD was playing now highlighted a side of Dunne's personality that the others refused to see. It was the angry young man, too smart for his own good, who hid, even from himself, the fact that he felt he'd been cheated – cheated by a mother's early death, cheated of normal school years by events beyond his control and judgmental, holier-than-thou people who didn't even really know him. He was on the right track with his life now, but the things he was seeing in this job kept a flicker of that anger alive. Chris saw it because it was exactly like the Buck Wilmington he had met nearly 15 years earlier. It was exactly how Chris had been after his family was murdered. Yes, that anger could go either way.
Ezra Standish was sitting in the back seat of the powerful SUV. He wished again he could have come up with a way to get the front passenger seat, but the subtle protocol and body language of an illegal conspiracy just didn't allow for the middle man in the negotiations to take that position. He was the new gun in town. So Anson Jones was driving and a new man in the mix, Pierce West, was riding shotgun.
But Pierce West wasn't really new. He was very well known in the federal counter terrorist community. And he was why Ezra had broken the cardinal rule of not tripping with the bad guys and was willing to risk Larabee's wrath by doing so.
Pierce West was a player. He had an agenda. He believed that the U.S. borders were too open and Americans loved their freedoms and civil liberties too much for them to ever stop terrorism. He had made it his lot in life to use small, high profile acts of terrorism to prove his point. He thought the attacks would be a reminder to everyone to always be vigilant. The bullet proof idealism of the 50's should be gone forever.
The problem was that for all his theatrics, they could never prove West had taken an innocent life. It made him something of a modern day Robin Hood to Libertarians and anarchists and some fine people that were just so scared shitless that they were looking for answers anywhere they could.
Oh, law enforcement believed – knew to a certainty – that West had killed: informants, people he considered dangerous to his agenda and people who he thought had or would betray him. He was suspected of killing police officers and security guards while stealing fertilizer and other precursors for his bombs. But none of it could be proved and so he boasted he never killed "non-combatants" and let them imagine that he had only killed terrorists. And nothing anyone could prove changed that. And so it was that Standish thought to wrangle his way into the man's organization and get that evidence.
But there was more. Pierce West had never openly killed anyone he considered innocent. Bombing a crowded college football homecoming game was a troubling change in strategy. Standish not only wanted to stop the threat, he wanted to know what brought about the change.
This was one of those times when being undercover was a lonely role. It had taken him a long time to trust the men he worked with and know with certainty they were behind him. That was a lot of the reason that, if not being able to get in the front seat, Ezra wished at least his new colleague didn't feel it necessary to be the good host. He was practically turned around in the front seat to meet Ezra's – or rather, Ethan Strayhorn's – eyes as they spoke. Ezra wasn't surprised. West periodically glanced out the back window. He was watching for surveillance that he could identify as law enforcement. Ezra was again thankful that they had taken the time to scrounge Texas license plates and stick them on their cars. West was too cautious, too paranoid. He would have snapped to something going on if he'd seen four or five Colorado plates on cars following him around all in the same day.
West had boasted that he set up his operation in a small town because everyone knew everyone. He knew all of the sheriff's deputies and local cops by sight. Anyone new in the area would stand out. The idea was well thought through, Ezra mused, but the boys were the best at leap frogging the cars often enough that no one car was spotted staying with them too long as a tail. So far, so good.
"… Our young men today? They're being corrupted in the class room." West was orating again. The pompous bigot loved to hear himself talk. Ezra was getting tired of it. It interfered with the negotiations.
"Politically correct? I call it revisionist history," the man continued. "A man should have the right to say anything he damn well pleases or is big enough to say."
"Possibly, to an extent I agree with you." Ezra tried to be accommodating. "But the opinions should be offered in the light of day for all the world to hear and evaluate. And if someone bigger than you disagrees, and if a melee should ensue, that should be one on one as well. I do not believe that hidin' behind pointed, sheeted masks and under cover of darkness, shows many redeemin' virtues."
"Ain't you got no pride in your heritage, man?" Anson demanded.
"I am very proud to be a son of the South, sir, and I claim her history, good and bad; her successes and her mistakes. But, sir, those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."
"What makes me think what you consider those mistakes to be are not what I would classify as mistakes?"
"A keen insight?"
"And yet you are poised to sell me the instrument to kill thousands, start another Civil War, and promote my platform. Why, if not patriotism?"
'Easy, Ezra,' Josiah thought to himself.
Ezra wasn't exactly channeling Josiah's thoughts, for, as good as he was, he couldn't avoid barking a laugh at this dysfunctional definition of patriotism.
"Do I amuse you?" West's voice was threatening.
"Most certainly," Ezra responded. If he had read this man right, agreeing with his agenda too fast, or too completely, too readily, would only make him suspicious.
"I suggest you answer the question with a little more detail. And it better be a good answer. Why are you willing to sell me the product?"
'To throw you in jail, you Zealot,' Ezra thought to himself. 'To find out why you're suddenly willing to kill innocent people. To put you somewhere that you can't accidentally stumble onto the makings of a dirty bomb.' Aloud, his answer was different. "For the money."
"That's what you believe in? Money?"
"Believe in? Mr. West, after hurricane Katrina, I heard a group of radical Islamic clerics take credit for that disaster. They said they prayed to Allah to attack America. I also heard a Southern Baptist preacher take credit, because he had prayed to God to destroy my beloved New Orleans because it was a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah."
"Do you have a point?"
"If clerics and preachers are praying for the same thing, and that thing is not peace, but destruction and death, I no longer care whose agenda is right or wrong. Your bomb – someone else's bomb? It's inevitable. It will be you or someone else. All I want is enough money to not be where it happens."
"You got no right to talk to Mr. West like that," Anson blurted. "He's gonna unite America."
"And then what? Against what?"
"Damn it, Ezra, back down," Chris Larabee growled to himself as broken parts of the conversation came over the scanner in his truck.
"No, Anson, a man motivated by greed is the easiest to predict. The easiest to trust. In his own way, Mr. Strayhorn knows that. And he is an honorable man. He doesn't like us, but knows business partners don't have to like each other."
"He's still got no right to disrespect what we believe."
"You, sir," Ezra turned to West, "are a true Pied Piper for the angry, militant youth of today. But if we can conclude our business, I'd like to bid you adieu as quickly as possible."
"Of course. Your timing is impeccable. I hate ending our little debate, but here we are."
Ezra had not missed the fact that they had arrived on the Baylor campus. "I do not need to see the scene of the crime, as it were," Ezra drawled, but let himself be led toward the football stadium.
"Indulge me. I appreciate irony – negotiating in the exact site where the detonation will take place."
"And you appreciate that no one can get close to us and eavesdrop in the middle of a football field."
"That, too," West admitted. "But also, there is another young man who will have to help us gather the money."
Ezra saw JD sauntering toward them with Trey and yet another new player. Their young ATF agent was dwarfed by the two men he accompanied. But they were young. Trey was the only member of this alliance Ezra had met whose clothing didn't hint that they lived below the poverty level. Yet all of their eyes had shown a sharp intelligence along with a streetwise savvy. They were the sort likely to fall victim to the cult mentality of a Pierce West. They knew there was more, they knew their lives could be better but were tired of fighting their way out of poverty. West said he would lead them, think for them, make decisions for them and give them a better life. He kept their bodies busy with military drills and their allegiance for his cause in their hearts. Hopefully most of them could be deprogrammed once Team 7 had put West somewhere where he could no longer influence them.
Ezra was so busy studying the young men approaching him and observing how well JD fit in, that he didn't realize Anson had been brooding since West had told him to mind his own business.